Do you have a Mac? (If not, go get one.)<\/p>\n
Do you get sucked into your computer’s vortex and it won’t let you out to do non-computer things you need to do? (You don’t have to answer that in public, we know that sometimes, the answer is an unequivocal yes.)<\/p>\n
There is help available for you, and it’s free. In the Mac App Store, there’s a free app called Time Out Free.\u00a0 By default, it is configured to put your computer in time out (not you–you’re good; you have control) every fifty minutes for ten minutes.\u00a0 It grays out your screen, and you can’t surf or type — unless you tell it to postpone the break for five or ten minutes or to skip it completely (see?\u00a0 I said, the computer goes into time out — you’re in charge).<\/p>\n
But for me, that’s been just enough of a nudge and a reminder that there are other things to do around the house than spend time on line.\u00a0 So I get up and I do something.\u00a0 For one break, I head upstairs and declutter a spare bedroom used for storage for fifteen minutes.\u00a0 For another break, I vacuum the downstairs.\u00a0 For another I’ll empty the dishwasher or start a load of laundry.\u00a0 Or maybe I’ll head over to the shop and do some work over there — obviously, that takes more than ten minutes, but the key is, I’m reminded to participate in the rest of my life and not stay stuck to the keyboard, which, frankly, is pretty tempting, if not very productive.<\/p>\n
See, I want to check email and catch up on Facebook and Twitter in the morning.\u00a0 But once the office chair sucks me in, I had a tough time dragging myself away to carry out the rest of my to do list for that day — even if it’s working on my writing, which is right next to me.\u00a0 So this little app has turned out to be very helpful.<\/p>\n
I have to credit EJ<\/a> for me getting it. She commented that she was getting a headache and needed to get away from the screen for a while, so I recommended this app.\u00a0 Then I had to download it and try it for myself, just to make sure it was what I thought it was.\u00a0 It was.<\/p>\n It’s very configurable.\u00a0 You can also take microbreaks — programmed to come up every ten minutes for about fifteen seconds to allow you to stretch or just do something different and change your focus.\u00a0 That should help reduce repetitive stress problems or remind us to change our posture.<\/p>\n This is a very flexible, useful program, and I can’t say enough good things about it this week.\u00a0 If you have a Mac, please consider giving it a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you have a Mac? (If not, go get one.) Do you get sucked into your computer’s vortex and it won’t let you out to do non-computer things you need to do? (You don’t have to answer that in public, we know that sometimes, the answer is an unequivocal yes.) …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}